Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Sherlock Google Channel Updated I just posted an update to the Google Channel for Jaguar's Sherlock. I cleaned up the results a bit and added a much better summary pane so it might actually be useful now. It also returns the results in the right order and no longer chops off the first result. The UI is still not what I would do if I had any control over it, but it's workable until the Sherlock SDK gets released. For people who subscribed to this it should update automatically. It definitely will update if you close Sherlock and reopen it. Hopefully, there's also a way for it to update while the App is running, but I'm not sure how it works yet. Since this version is much more useful, here's the install instructions again. The Sherlock URL to add this channel to Sherlock. sherlock://www.xmldatabases.org/projects/GoogleSearch/Channel.xml?action=add In Internet Explorer you should just be able to click the link and it will automatically add it. Other browsers may or may not work (Chimera does, Omniweb doesn't). However, you can add it from within Sherlock under Sherlock : Preferences : Subscriptions, click Add and then use this URL. http://www.xmldatabases.org/projects/GoogleSearch/channels.xml 7:44:39 PM    comment

Monday, August 26, 2002

Google Search Channel for Sherlock 3.0 While I've been hacking around with Sherlock I managed to put together a new search channel to search Google. In every sense of the word this is a hack since Apple hasn't released the Sherlock SDK yet. The main problem is altering the UI elements. Without the SDK you can't open the nib files in Interface Builder so I used the AppleCare channel UI and hacked it with a hex editor to change some of the strings. The scripts are easy once you battle through the weird conglomeration of Javascript and XQuery that they are using. Anyway, to use the channel it's really easy. Here is the Sherlock URL to add this channel to Sherlock. sherlock://www.xmldatabases.org/projects/GoogleSearch/Channel.xml?action=add In Internet Explorer you should just be able to click the link and it will automatically add it. Other browsers may not work, but you should be able to add it under Sherlock : Preferences : Subscriptions, click Add and then use this URL. http://www.xmldatabases.org/projects/GoogleSearch/channels.xml This channel is an experiment and really only exists because I wanted to figure out how Sherlock works. Once Apple releases the SDK it will be possible to build much more compelling examples. BTW, if anyone knows where I can get the SDK please let me know. What this does is search Google and return the first 100 results. Clicking the search button again will return another 100 results and so on. Single clicking an item shows the abstract in the bottom window and double clicking it opens it in a new browser window. There are a few caveats with this. The relevance column isn't used, it's just there because it's part of the AppleCare interface and I couldn't remove it. Search results aren't returned in the same order that Google returns them, I'm trying to figure this out. Now the interesting part about how Sherlock works is that if I update the channel it should be updated automatically in Sherlock. This provides a way to offer limited functionality applications with native Mac OS X GUIs and strong web services support via a centrally managed mechanism. Other then the Google pieces, all the logic for the channel runs within a constrained environment within Sherlock. You don't have full native access to the local PC since it would be horribly insecure. There is much more that can be done here then what Apple is currently using. In environments where Mac OS X is the main OS, Sherlock should become a tool for many things well beyond toy apps like searching Google. I'll try to explain more on what I mean in the future. 3:50:17 PM    comment

Friday, July 12, 2002

Mac Users are Smarter Are Mac users smarter?. A new study compares Mac-using Web surfers with their PC-wielding counterparts. If you're reading this on Windows, feel free to take your time on the big words. [CNET News.com] Yep, sure are. :-) 4:57:11 PM    comment

Sunday, June 30, 2002

Switching Ad Spoofs Go, Macedition, Go. [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion] I suspect we'll be seeing a bunch of these in the future. Of course the Bill Gates parody is the best. 2:21:05 AM    comment

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Apple Todo List Apple Top 10 List Revisited: A Look Back. More than a year has passed since I cobbled together my original Top 10 list of suggestions for Apple Computer. During the year, Apple released a new version of OS X (v10.1), along with several updates. But how well did my suggestions fare in the course of such a turbulent year? [osOpinion] This is definitely one person's view on things, but it was an interesting read anyway. 7:25:05 PM    comment

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

iMac Sales Bushels of new iMacs piling up. Apple Computer, which initially couldn't meet demand for its new flat-panel iMac, now appears to have the opposite problem. [CNET News.com: Personal Technology] This is rather disturbing to hear, but the article makes an interesting point that I'd never really thought about. It suggests that laptop sales are having a serious impact on the sales of desktops. Thinking about this, it really makes a lot of sense. I know everyone I know who's wanted to buy a Mac has wanted a laptop and I almost always recommend laptops. In fact, even though I have a Mac desktop I still do everything on my Powerbook. At this point I really doubt if I'd buy a new desktop. 7:00:09 PM    comment Virtual PC 5.0.4 Virtual PC 5.0.4 released [MacCentral] 1:42:23 PM    comment OS X Security Get serious about OS X security. An article posted on the OSXFAQ site should be of interest if you are worried about keeping your OS X installation secure: Mission Lockdown: Get smart with security tactics for Mac OS X by Kevin White. [Mac Net Journal] 3:21:47 AM    comment Omniweb 4.1 - Better Late then Never OmniWeb 4.1 released [MacCentral] Omniweb has finally shipped the final Omniweb 4.1. I thought this was supposed to have happened a couple weeks ago, but seems the delay was because they had to create a new icon. Anyway, Omniweb is still my main browser so I'm happy to see this. 1:53:37 AM    comment

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Dvorak on Apple and Innovation in the PC Industry Dvorak: Mac is 'an old hound that can't hunt' [MacCentral] When I first read this I thought he was actually being perceptive and in a round about way was actually complementing Apple. Of course then I read through his followups and it turns out he was just bashing Apple after all. Very disappointing, because he made some good points. You could theoretically look at the switch to Mac OS X as a real lost opportunity for Apple to break all the molds. You could say they did have the opportunity to bury the Mac and step to a new level with a truly revolutionary platform. Of course, this is totally unrealistic and there's no way that Apple, even assuming they had the ideas, could have brought something truly revolutionary to market. Why is described in The Innovator's Dilemma. The market and Apple's business tolerance for risk would simply not allow them to make that radical of a shift. The very existence of things like the Carbon APIs as a first class programming API rather then just a temporary porting API is a good indication of this. The developers demanded it, they wouldn't even allow Apple to move the small step to focusing 100% on the Cocoa APIs. Stepping too far outside the bounds, in their core business, would simply destroy the company. Microsoft is in the same boat with the .Net platform. An entirely new and revolutionary platform simply could/would not be accepted rapidly enough by the people that Apple needed to accept it. Basically, it would have meant a brand new platform with no software and not much support from the existing developer community. Apple would quite literally be starting from scratch. Regardless of how technologically superior the platform could hypothetically be, the business factors for all parties involved are simply too constraining. Apple did the right thing. Even though it isn't an earth shaking innovation, Mac OS X is still easily the best OS around (in my opinion of course). 2:27:49 PM    comment

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